TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) - Directed by Orson Welles
- Orson Welles shot predominantly at night in order to fend off meddlesome studio suits.
- The nighttime filming of the long, single tracking shot opening sequence had many retakes. It took so long that the sequence used was the last chance that night; the first light of the breaking dawn is visible in the background.
- Orson Welles was originally hired only to act in the film, but due to a misunderstanding, Charlton Heston understood that Welles was to be the director. To keep Heston happy, producer Albert Zugsmith allowed Welles to direct.
- Orson Welles was fired as director during post-production, and the film was recut contrary to his wishes. Before his death, he left instructions on how he wanted the film to be edited, and in 1998 a version was made the way he intended.
- The customs officer in the long opening shot, who converses briefly with Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, flubbed his lines several times. Eventually, director Orson Welles told him to simply mouth the words.
- Premiered as the second half of a double bill (hence its 'B' movie status)
- From the legendary opening tracking shot - still technically mesmerising - Russell Metty's black and white photography creates a strange chiaroscuro, noir landscape (though a straggler of the genre, the film stands as one of its finest entries) in which quintessential Wellesian themes of evil, corruption, and moral ambiguity loom large.
- It was named best film at the 1958 Brussels World Fair (Godard and Truffaut were on the jury), but in America it opened on the bottom half of a double bill, failed, and put an end to Welles' prospects of working within the studio system.
- This might be the best approach for anyone seeing the film for the first time: to set aside the labyrinthine plot, and simply admire what is on the screen. The movie begins with one of the most famous shots ever made, following a car with a bomb in its trunk for three minutes and 20 seconds. And it has other virtuoso camera movements, including an unbroken interrogation in a cramped room, and one that begins in the street and follows the characters through a lobby and into an elevator.
- The destinies of all of the main characters are tangled from beginning to end, and the photography makes that point by trapping them in the same shots, or tying them together through cuts that match and resonate. The story moves not in a straight line, but as a series of loops and coils.
- Vargas, a bystander, finds himself drawn into the investigation, to Quinlan's intense displeasure; the movie becomes a competition between the two men, leading to the sheriff's efforts to frame Vargas and his bride on drug and murder charges.
- Note the sexually obsessed motel night clerk (Dennis Weaver), whose peculiar skittishness may have given ideas to Anthony Perkins for ``Psycho'' two years later.
- Although the plot line is possible to follow, the real point is the way Quinlan veers from the investigation to follow his own agenda.
- The clash between the national cultures gets an ironic flip: Vargas reflects gringo stereotypes while Quinlan embodies cliches about Mexican lawmen.